The described embodiments relate generally to improving document and content management systems that control access to shareable documents to provide collaboration among users, and particularly to determining a measure of collaboration among users and/or recommending collaboration groups to users to facilitate communication.
Online content management systems allow users to share content items from one client to another client. The client devices are computing devices that provide content items to a content management system for storage and synchronization with other client devices. Content management systems typically store content items for a variety of computer applications including for example word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, and presentation applications. When content items are added, deleted, or edited on a device, these modifications are sent to the content management system for storage and synchronization with other devices.
Content management systems also facilitate collaboration among users. Users may collaborate by using respective devices to separately view and edit a particular content item. For example, a user can share a folder or content item to allow one or more users to collaborate on the same content items and/or folders where the changes to the content items or folders are synced with other users who have been granted access rights to those content items and folders. Further, since group communication while collaborating is important, content management systems may also provide a chat or messaging service to allow users to directly communicate in chat groups while collaboratively editing, reviewing, or viewing content items.
Creating new groups for group communication or messaging has conventionally been a manual, time-consuming, and relatively labor-intense process. Conventionally, when creating a new group message, a user must manually search through their contacts or rely on auto fill. This often leads to inadvertently leaving individuals out of the message who should otherwise be a part of the communication, which tends to happen more as the number of users in the group gets larger. This can be particularly important in a business when it is critical that the right personnel are privy to the information being discussed or exchanged.